TVA Watts Bar 1 began scheduled outage, removed irradiated TPBAR in early November

The Tennessee Valley Authority began a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage Nov. 1 at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Unit 1, the quasi-government corporation announced last week.

A Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) spokesperson told the Monitor in an email that tritium-producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARs) are “loaded during a refueling outage, irradiated during one cycle, and removed during the following refueling outage.”

The spokesperson did not say how many TPBARs were removed, and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) did not immediately reply to comment.

At the NNSA’s (NNSA) request, TVA is preparing, under a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license amendment issued in April, to irradiate a maximum of 2,496 TPBARs for every cycle of its Watts Bar Unit 1 and Unit 2 reactors. That is up from 1,792 TPBARs previously. 

Watts Bar Unit 1 has produced tritium for National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear weapons programs since 2003. Watts Bar Unit 2 started loading TPBAR in 2020. 

According to the NNSA’s 2025 budget request, published in March, the first Watts Bar power cycle under the amended license would not max out on TPBAR.